Blackberry Wine
by Schmo and Sushi
Summary: Prince Corin's life is a hot summer evening. Queen Lucy is his blackberry wine. Corin/Lucy. Oneshot.


_A/N: So, yeah. Schmo and I were bored last night, and she challenged me to write me 100 words of Corin/Lucy shipping. Here we are. Enjoy!_

* * *

She was beautiful.

There was no use denying it any longer. Corin was smitten. Besotted. Moonstruck. Swept off his feet. (Dare he say it…lustful?)

The girl—the _woman_—who had so ensnared his senses was peachy plump, young, fresh and all tossing hair and saucy rejoinders. Her lively eyes haunted him; they followed him about the palace wherever he wandered, woke him suddenly at night, prodded and poked and teased until every last one of his carefully-constructed defenses came crumbling down.

Corin hated her for it, and yet still he hungered for every vibrant glance, every private moment, every laughing word. She was like blackberry wine on a sultry summer night; sweet and tart and cool and _intoxicating_.

He liked to spend his idle moments thinking about ways to sate his overpowering desire for her. A stolen kiss in a window well. A long, passionate embrace in the flowing grass of the hay meadows. Lingering touches when she was supposed to be binding up his scrapes after a scuffle.

What he didn't like to think about, though, was her reaction to these supposed overtures…or, indeed, the reactions of those around them. She was an _older woman_, his senior by no fewer than five years. She had made it clear that she was not interested in marriage. She had her duties, and he had his.

Corin groaned. Bound as he was by law and allegiance, he was at the mercy of his father's court—only they could initiate the titillating sparring match that was courtship. And he may dream as much as he wished, but if anyone were to marry his luscious peach, it would be Cor, the heir to the throne of Archenland.

But his father was a bit behind the times, of course. King Lune liked to think that Cor and Corin were placed in boxes, as it were, and set on different shelves; both of them completely distinct and different from the other—Corin, pugnacious and impetuous and completely unromantic, and Cor, intelligent and prudent and utterly bound to tradition and legacy.

But Corin knew, and he knew that Cor knew that he knew, that Cor—loyal and obedient Cor—was quite content in the arms of his Aravis.

Which left Corin's sassy tart quite unclaimed.

However—and this was the most uncomfortable and undesirable 'however' of the whole mess—Corin's sassy tart was, alas…

"Presenting Her Majesty the Queen Lucy."

The manservant's loud announcement pulled Corin harshly into reality. It suddenly dawned on him that he had been sitting at the same window for so long that his breath had steamed it into opaqueness, and the panes had created little dents in his forehead and cheek that refused to flesh back out despite desperate massaging. Still, he knew he had to bow, so he feigned an itch on his temple as he did so, keeping his eyes cast down.

The queen laughed. "Did I startle you, Corin?" she asked.

"No," he answered stoutly, straightening from his bow but fixing his eyes on a point somewhere above Her Majesty's head. "You're merely…"

"Early?" she finished gleefully. "I know. But I thought I'd come and surprise you. You're always so amusing when you're surprised."

Corin couldn't help himself. "I'm not surprised," he protested. "I'm mildly bemused, that's all." During the course of this little declaration, he had allowed his eyes to wander down from the point above Lucy's head to Lucy herself, but he quickly regretted the action. She was wearing a riding frock of the brightest yellow, her cloak thrown across her arm and her hair loose. _Doesn't she know that the fashion is tight braids_? Cor thought vaguely, entranced by the wide expanse of soft skin left unmarred by the collar of her dress.

Lucy shook her wavy hair back from her face, leaving her neck bare. "Well, I doubt Cor and Aravis are ready for us to meet them."

"No," Corin said stupidly, feeling fuzzy and slow-witted beside Lucy's dazzling self.

"I suppose we'll just have to wait here."

"Yes."

She lingered in front of him, then turned to the manservant by the door and said, "Thank you. That'll be all."

The sound of the door shutting echoed over and over in Corin's brain.

Lucy brushed past him and found herself a seat on—Corin groaned silently—the only settee in the room. Rather than make the agonizing decision between finding a respectful seat in a separate chair and placing himself on the settee within touching distance of her person, Corin chose to remain standing.

"It is a lovely day," Lucy said, tilting her head and shifting her legs. It didn't occur to Corin that it was actually rather windy and rainy, but he was well aware that somehow, Lucy's skirt had slipped aside enough to display a single white ankle. "Good for riding."

Corin managed a halfway intelligent response.

Lucy looked at him again, her eyes twinkling. "Oh, come, Corin, do sit down. You look so uncomfortable standing around like that."

Before he could refuse, she was patting the cushion beside her. _Queen_, he thought violently, _queen. Queen. She's a queen!_

But he sat next to her, folding his hands together so tightly that his knuckles went white.

"There," she cooed, nudging his shoulder with her own. "Much better."

Not for Corin. From this position, he could not only see her perfect ankle—pink and shapely and soft—but he could smell her rosewater perfume, feel the tickle of her hair through the sleeve of his tunic, see the curve of her bosom out of the corner of his eye. And there she was! Wide-eyed and wearing a laughing smile on her strawberry-pink lips, tilting her face and blushing at him.

Oh, if she was trying to seduce him, he thought with a taut smile, she was doing a _damn_ good job at it.

Lucy nudged him again. "I thought of you last night."

Such innocent words should never be allowed to evoke such a visceral response in anyone. With an effort, Corin peeked at her and said lightly, "Oh? I hope it was pleasant."

She smiled. "A friend made me a gift of blackberry wine. I drank some of it, and thought of you immediately. Do you…do you like blackberry wine?"

"I like it very much," he said fervently, and got up from the settee to pace around the room a bit.

"You're awfully restless this morning," Lucy commented.

Corin wanted to grab her by the shoulders and kiss some sense into her. But he only smiled and said, "Just anxious to get out and test the horseflesh, Your Majesty."

"Aren't we all?" Lucy murmured. "Tell me, what do you think of Dragon Slayer? My royal brothers are thinking of purchasing him from your father."

Corin had turned his back on her and so was finding his mental capacity returning. "My loyalties are divided, my Queen," he said. "I may tell you the truth, that he is the best horse in my royal father's stables, or I may tell you that Moonbeam is the better horse, in order to keep Dragon Slayer for myself."

Lucy laughed. "In that case, I shall tell my royal brothers to buy Moonbeam instead. You see, you lied and said you would lie in the hopes that I would believe your non-lie lie and purchase Dragon Slayer, leaving the best horse in your royal father's stables—Moonbeam—for yourself. I know you far too well, Your Royal Highness."

She was completely right, of course. It was at that moment of utter gratification that Corin decided that he simply couldn't resist it any longer—damn the consequences, but he _had_ to have Lucy Pevensie.

He turned to face her. She must have noticed his change in demeanor, for the teasing element in her smile softened and faded away, leaving a very vulnerable and beautiful Lucy in its place, and she leaned forward slightly, as if to stand up. For some reason, he decided she needed help in this endeavor.

In two strides, Corin had passed from the window to the settee, and if Lucy had any objection to his proximity, she didn't say. So he took her by the shoulders, the soft curves of her flesh making his palms tingle with anticipation, and pulled her to her feet. He had been standing so close before she left the settee that, once she was wholly standing, her body was a mere hairsbreadth away from his.

He could have waited in breathless anticipation, he later thought, or let her decide how to proceed, but Prince Corin was not the sort of person to wait around for others to make up their minds. Decisively and fervently, then (and yes, perhaps a bit nervously), he bent down and stole a firm, long-awaited kiss from the queen of Narnia.

Corin had hoped that the contact would cure him of his all-consuming hunger for her. As it were, he tried hard not to taste the vestiges of tea on her lips, to pay attention to the tantalizing warmth of her body, to feel his rising pulse. Alas, he found as he drew away, all too mindful of what he had just done, that the kiss had only intensified his feelings, leaving him woozy and foggy-minded.

"I suppose you want me to apologize," he forced out brashly, backing up a few steps.

Lucy just looked at him with those big eyes of hers, and Corin wanted to simultaneously jump out the window and give her another solid kiss.

"Well, I won't," he went on, his nerve threatening to fail him. "I'm no poet, but you know just as well as I do that we're different, and I don't know what to do besides act on what I feel."

His logic was running in circles, he knew, but his brain continued replaying the memory over and over again until he was dizzy.

"I should have expected nothing less from you, Corin," Lucy said at last, taking a menacing step forward.

His heart fell, and he felt an indescribable wall of emotion rising up within him. Unable to cope with the sudden rush of sentiment, he fell back another few steps.

"You _always_ act on what you feel," she continued. She was walking towards him, and Corin suddenly found himself backed up against the cold stone wall, with nowhere to turn. This had happened before, with highly unpleasant outcomes. He squeezed his eyes shut.

"And that's what I admire about you," Lucy said softly.

He had just started to open his eyes when Lucy took him by the collar of his tunic and dragged him down into an eager kiss. The motion and resulting rush of adrenaline nearly knocked him off-balance, and Lucy gave a brief, muffled laugh before returning to the business at hand.

Her enthusiasm was more than contagious—it was _electrifying_. Corin found himself deliciously out of breath, and his hands had scarcely found a comfortable place buried in her fragrant hair when they were darting down to caress her arms and pull her closer. The whole world was suffused with a strange sensation of being half-awake and more than alive, as if he were living out one of his fantasies—he could taste Lucy's kindness, her beauty, her maddening impertinence, and at the same time her vulnerability and absolute perfection.

"When I said I liked blackberry wine," he whispered against her lips, rubbing his thumb against the soft inside of the wrist that was pressed against his neck, "I meant very much that I liked _you_."

"I thought as much," she answered in a like fashion, and stroked the tip of his ear. "Especially since you _are_ one who gave me the gift."

This gave him momentary pause. "I did?"

Lucy laughed, nodded, and said, "It's all right. After all, we feelers are never expected to think much."

Corin let her words sink in, enjoying all the possible meanings, and then slipped his arm back around Lucy's waist and returned to his intoxicatingly sweet blackberry wine.


End file.
